The original RIPEMD function was designed in the framework of the
EU project RIPE (
RACE Integrity Primitives Evaluation) in 1992. Its design was based on the
MD4 hash function. In 1996, in response to security weaknesses found in the original RIPEMD,
Hans Dobbertin,
Antoon Bosselaers and
Bart Preneel at the
COSIC research group at the
Katholieke Universiteit Leuven in
Leuven, Belgium published four strengthened variants: RIPEMD-128, RIPEMD-160, RIPEMD-256, and RIPEMD-320. In August 2004, a collision was reported for the original RIPEMD. This does not apply to RIPEMD-160. In 2019, the best collision attack for RIPEMD-160 could reach 34 rounds out of 80 rounds, which was published at CRYPTO 2019. In February 2023, a collision attack for RIPEMD-160 was published at EUROCRYPT 2023, which could reach 36 rounds out of 80 rounds with time complexity of 264.5. In December 2023, an improved collision attack was found based on the technique from the previous best collision attack, this improved collision attack could reach 40 rounds out of 80 round with a theoretical time complexity of 249.9. ==RIPEMD-160 hashes==